


EK-4006 and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

by Ka_Zorin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, That's it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28764951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ka_Zorin/pseuds/Ka_Zorin
Summary: A quick character study of a snowtrooper defector involving smugglers, spiders, ravinaks, and an all-around not good time.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Kudos: 1





	EK-4006 and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

EK-4006 did not  _ intend _ to get tangled in a firefight on Maldo Kreis. They'd heard about a rebel cell holed up here, and been sent to scout it out, and discovered-

Well-

Not  _ rebels _ , probably. Smugglers, most likely. EK-4125 was flagging, and she reached out her hand to pull him up, only to jerk back and keep running as a grenade landed at his feet. The ice caverns cracked and splintered around them from the force of the explosion. So. EK-4125 was dead now. She ran harder, breath coming in gasps as blaster fire echoed around the tunnels.

Something skittered past her feet- was that a  _ giant spider? _ Moving quickly, it skittered up the wall and vanished. The blasters continued behind her, but now there were screams intermingled- maybe a ravinak had crashed into the tunnel? It wasn't flooding yet, but if that had happened, she was going to drown. Great. She could see the ship ahead; that meant backup! Relief flooded her, giving her that extra push to the ship-

It was covered in spiderwebs. Where had the spiderwebs come from? She staggered to a halt, gasping, useless dead blaster in her hand anyway, staring about wildly. There was no sign of the other troopers-

Oh.

Oh  _ kriff _ .

They were tangled in the spiderwebs, unmoving. Her HUD declared there to be no life signs.

...

She half-glanced back the way she came. Maybe her chances would be better with the smugglers? Then again, they seemed pretty set on taking her head off her shoulders.

...It'd be quicker than the spiders, though.

That decided, she slowly went back, HUD set to scan for  _ any _ trace of heat now, any sign of even the smallest spider. Who knew what might happen if she let her guard down.

The tunnels were so still that her breath seemed unnaturally loud. Could the spiders hear her moving around? She shivered. If she didn't have arachnophobia after this, she'd eat her kriffing helmet.

She found the smugglers- or rather, what was left of them. Her HUD told her one was alive, if unconscious, but the other four were quickly cooling. Very dead. She didn't look too closely at the webbing, but even a cursory glance told her they were practically skeletons.

_ What's special about you? _ she wondered, approaching the fifth smuggler cautiously. Nothing stood out right away.

"Hey," she said, nudging him with a foot. "We ain't gonna survive if you lie there like a sloth. Let's go."

He groaned, eyes opening, and then scrambled for his blaster. EK-4006 suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. "I'm not going to  _ kill you,"  _ she hissed. "Then we'll  _ both die." _

"I'm- I'm not helping no Empire scum!" His voice cracked. Kriff, he couldn't be older than seventeen.

EK-4006 remained patient, somehow. "My squad is dead. So is yours. If you want to survive this, stick close to me and we *might* make it out. How'd you survive the first wave?"

He blinked at her, gun wavering. "J-Jastis. He had an EMP. I set it off on accident, while they were- uh- and-" He was rapidly starting to go into shock.

EK-4006 kicked him. "Nope. None of that. You set off the EMP, and they fled. Good to know. Where's your ship?"

He frowned. "Back that way. The caves collapsed, we- we were gonna steal yours."

"Kriff," EK-4006 said, with feeling. "Mine's covered in spiders. We're just gonna have to go around and hope we can get to yours."

He struggled to his feet. "Right. Th-this way... probably." They set off back through the caves.

The ice caverns were beautiful, in a horrifying way. The HUD couldn't see much through the walls, but EK-4006 figured if the spiders came back, they'd be kriffed anyway, so it didn't matter. Either they'd live or they wouldn't. Her new 'friend' was much jumpier, twitching at the slightest creak from the tunnel walls, or a slightly different crunch from the snow beneath their feet. It was like he'd never been stranded in a freezer before, _honestly._

They'd been walking for what felt like hours. EK-4006's HUD confirmed they weren't walking in circles, which was nice, just winding through the labyrinthian tunnels and hopefully getting closer. Her 'friend' had stopped twitching a while ago, but he'd started shivering violently instead. If he stopped moving, he'd probably instantly freeze to death. Even EK-4006's suit was beginning to struggle to keep up with the plummeting temperatures. When it got cold on Maldo Kreis, it got  _ cold _ .

He was starting to flag, slowing down, and EK-4006 pursed her lips under the helmet. "Keep moving," she told him. "Do you need to talk to stay awake?"

The idiot shook his head, teeth chattering. "N-no. It's n-not m-much farther." He'd said that at least six times now. The spiders undoubtedly wouldn't hold off for much longer.

"Double time," she said, and increased speed. He did not, and she slowed down again.  _ "Double time  _ means  _ twice as fast,"  _ she hissed. "Are you dense, boy?"

"I'm not a b-boy, I'm  _ s-sixteen _ ," he hissed right back. "And I d-don't think I c-can."

She leveled him with a thoroughly unimpressed stare, but he was right. They couldn't stop to rest, though- he'd freeze in moments, and then she'd wander forever until she starved or was eaten. Or both. "Not much farther," she assured him, glad her helmet hid the dubious expression on her face. "Not-not much farther."

They wandered in silence for what felt like eternity. EK-4006 liked the snow and ice well enough, when it wasn't full of critters trying to murder her, but today she'd had enough, thank you. This was worse than  _ several _ training exercises that she had gone out of her way to forget about. She hadn't been this on edge since then, that was for sure.

With a sharp cry, her frozen companion surged forward, and she had to bite back her own sob of relief as she saw a ship ahead of them. It had some thick pieces of ice on top of it, but nothing the ship couldn't handle, it was almost over, they were home free-

Ahead of her, the boy stumbled as the ice cracked under his feet, and grabbed the edge of the ever-widening ledge that yawned open beneath him. Far below him, open water surged. Ice didn't shatter like that except-

Except around ravinaks.

EK-4006 moved as if in a dream, sprinting as hard as her exhausted body would let her, jumping the widening gap as the boy screamed. She crashed safely on the side with the ship as the caverns quaked. Shards of ice rained down, and for a brief, glorious moment she almost just kept running to the ship, almost fired it up and didn't look back.

"GRAB MY HAND," she shouted, falling on her chest and reaching out to her stupid new companion.

"I CAN'T REACH IT," he sobbed. Couldn't he  _ try  _ and help her save him? The nerve of some people! She inched farther out as ice and snow rained down around them, as the cracks in the ground grew bigger and bigger.

Finally, desperately, she grabbed hold of his wrist, and then their hands locked, and she hauled the idiot back up onto slightly more stable ground. She didn't give him time to breathe, shoving him along ahead of her towards the smugglers' ship. It was starting to sink slightly, the left landing strut having gone through one of the cracks in the cavern. With them both safely aboard, EK-4006 started slamming the ship into gear as fast as it would go. It shuddered and hummed, beginning to rise-

Beginning to  _ sink,  _ with a horrible whining noise. Something had grabbed hold of them. Blaster rifle in hand, she ran back to the hatch. Huge teeth greeted her, latched onto the left landing gear, mangling the  _ shisk  _ out of it. She fired at it, hitting the thing's eye dead center. It shrieked, letting go, and they rose. EK-4006 exhaled shakily, and shut the hatch, stepping back inside. She was alive.

"Uh…"

Cursing, she ran back to her idiot, who was pointing shakily at a  _ kriffing spider about the size of her hand _ .

She shot it six times, just to be sure, and then dragged him into the cockpit and shoved him into the copilot's seat, ripping her helmet off to see the controls. "Dank  _ ferrik."  _ She flipped a few switches, and got to her feet again. "Keep us here," she ordered, pointing a finger at the already half-unconscious copilot. "Don't move the ship."

She trudged back to the hatch, and opened it warily. They were only about two hundred feet up- high enough that the ravinak couldn't jump up and eat them, but low enough it was circling. Good. The wind was bitingly cold, but she let the helmet drop anyway, watching with approval as the ravinak leapt up and ate it. She'd miss the HUD. Nothing else. Her gauntlets went next, and then the chestplate, the pauldrons, and on and on. The ravinak savagely snapped it all down, continuing to circle.

She kept her boots, because there was no tracker in them and she didn't want to walk around without them, and headed back into the ship. Sure enough, her idiot was dozing in the copilot's seat, but she couldn't bring herself to be mad at him.

"Hey, nerfherder!"

He jerked awake. "Whazzat?"

EK-4006 tapped a lever gently, and they started moving forward. "You got any family that  _ isn't  _ smugglers, kid?"

"Not- not a kid." He sneezed. "Uh, I got an uncle on Dantooine. Keban, uh... Xianthu."

Xianthu. She was stealing that immediately for her own new last name, thank you. "Dantooine it is."

"Where's your armor?"

She shot him an annoyed look, and he shrank back in his seat. Whoops. No helmet meant he could absolutely see her glaring. "Ravinak ate it."

" _ Ate _ i- er, right," he said, clearly confused, and sneezed again. "It's so hot in here…"

"It's not," she told him, tapping in coordinates for the jump to hyperspace. "You're sick."

"I never get sick," he bragged, and she gave him another entirely unimpressed look. Right. He sniffled, rubbing at his nose, and she made the call for him.

"Go lie down, nerfherder. I'll have us to your uncle in about… seventeen hours," she promised.

He wavered, but the siren call of sleep clearly won out, and he trudged down to wherever the sleeping quarters were. Thank the kriffing seven hells. She eased the ship into the jump, and leaned back, putting her feet on the dash.

Her entire squad, dead. Just like that. Not even to  _ people,  _ who she could swear revenge on. To a bunch of  _ oversized spiders. _

Except EK-4125 and EK-76765, of course, but the smugglers who'd killed them were almost certainly dead. Her idiot didn't seem capable of that- and even if he was, she didn't hold it against him.

She glanced down to make sure the cockpit door was sealed- then, and only then, did she allow herself to sob. 


End file.
